Reality Vs Fantasy
by BecsX
Summary: Neela lived two lives. Real and fantasy. When did they switch places? Reela angst.


**Title:** Reality Vs. Fantasy  
**Warnings:** Nothin…  
**Spoilers**: Nothing specific.  
**Disclaimer:** Yeah, I don't own ER... don't sue me. Not that it'd do much good- I'm skint! hehe!  
**Rating:** Um... K? Nothing bad, explicit or anything like that.  
**Summary:** Neela lived two lives. Real and fantasy. When did they switch places? Reela angst.  
**A/N:** So! This is a different route for me. I don't usually do angsty… it's really not my thing but I sat down and this is what came out… let me know what you think. Should I stick to fluff? grin Neela POV.

* * *

As a child I believed that I led two lives; a real life, and a fantasy life.

In my real life I'd go to school, do my homework, eventually get a job and find someone to share my life with. You know, what everybody thinks and hopes they're going to get out of their life. Normal things. A man I love and who loves me, children, a job, a house; the normal stuff.

Then, in my mind I led another life, a fantasy life. In this life everything I knew would never happen to me, happened. That life was constantly changing from one week to the next. One week I'd be a princess just waiting for my prince charming to come along and take me away. The next week I was a pirate on the high seas with no thoughts of settling down with anyone.

I guess not much has changed then.

I still live two lives. In my real life I have a job that I love in a place that I adore. I have a man that I love, who loves me in return and I have a home that I couldn't imagine my life without; I have everything I've ever wanted from my real life as a child and I love that thought.

Things have changed in my fantasy life though. I no longer chop and change between fantasies; they are always constant now. I don't see myself as anything other than what I am, but I'm with a perfect man who would do anything for me. He's gorgeous, thoughtful, loving and brave. He's everything I want and more. I can put a face and a name to this fantasy man. This man isn't real, not as I imagine him at least. His name is Michael Gallant.

Oh yes, I realise now. Now that it's too late to do anything about it. I have mingled my real life with my fantasy life and married a fantasy.

I didn't really know Michael when I married him. It was such a snap decision and everything happened in a blink of an eye. Before I could really think about what I was doing I was already married and it was no time to look back. No time for regrets.

I'm not saying that I regret marrying Michael, far from it. It's something that I wouldn't change for the world but I do wish that I have given it a little more thought. Perhaps I would have realised then what I know now. The man I had built up in to be this perfect image high up on a pedestal, the man of my dreams had never existed in Michael. I didn't know him. I hoped I did and I convinced myself of what I hoped for was reality.

He's been out in Iraq fro the majority of our marriage and maybe that's how we've lasted so long. When he's away I forget about all of the bad things. I forget how the real man shatters my illusion in a single moment of reality. I forget everything about the real man and focus instead upon the man I have fantasised about. The man that I married.

But, if Michael was the man in my fantasy, who is it that I am so hopelessly in love with in reality? Who really holds my heart? Probably the last person in the world that I would have expected to fall in love with; Ray Barnett.

Yes, it's true that he's not perfect. He can drive me completely mental sometimes with the silly little things that he does. He can irritate me with a single word, but he can also make me melt with a look, a smile, even just a twinkle in his eyes!

Ray… Ray isn't perfect, he isn't the ideal roommate that I wanted when I agreed to move in with him, and he certainly isn't the most considerate of types but I fell in love with him none the less. The _real_ him. Not a man without faults, not a version of him that even he couldn't live up to.

I spent so long believing that it was Ray that was my fantasy. It was my 'other self' that was attracted to him because it couldn't possibly the 'me' that people saw. No, that person was happily married to a perfect man. That person was organised beyond comprehension and constantly in control of her feelings. There was no way that Dr Neela Rasgotra could be falling in love with the 'Rock Doc'. Her best friend.

I'm not sure what it was that finally made me crack. I've no idea how everything suddenly became so clear, but now I know the truth I know there's nothing I can do.

I can't break up with Michael, he's in Iraq! He's fighting for his country hundreds and thousands of miles from home with no family and no one to go home to at night. It would break him if I ended it while he was out there so I have no choice. I have to be the dutiful soldier's wife and wait for him to come back and crush my fantasy all over again.

I have to live without that love that I crave, the love that I need from Ray because this is the life that I made for myself. Now I have to live it, even if it is killing me every second of the day knowing that I'm cut off from my real life.

I never wanted to live a fantasy life, but now I'm stuck and I can't escape.

What did you think? Dont forget to review! Thanks for reading :)

Just Breathing


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